[NM] Bad Press: Don’t Read Too Much Into Konami’s Trademark Renewals

November 26th, 2018 Connor

Konami this week silently renewed its trademarks for Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid in Europe and the press is already speculating on what this could mean: A Playstation Classic lineup? Remakes? Remasters? A surprise announcement at the game awards? Don’t hold your breath.

This story comes up whenever a developer is found to renew trademarks in some territory and while the speculation will certainly bring in views and thus ad revenue, the answer is rarely newsworthy. Right now the only upcoming Metal Gear related release that the public is aware of is Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation Classic. Apart from that, all is silent over at the smouldering remains of Kojima Productions.

That said, the fact that Konami is renewing the Metal Gear trademarks is nothing to get prematurely excited about. Outside of defunct developers, this process is done essentially on an automated basis or by third parties in order to ensure that said trademarks don’t lapse. Nintendo still owns trademarks for games dating back to the arcades and NES games from the 80’s that they have no intention of ever selling or developing sequels for, yet don’t want the trademark to lapse.

Konami may never develop another Metal Gear Solid game again, but they aren’t going to let the trademark expire because that means other parties could use it, and if there’s one thing that game developers hate it’s other people making use of their unwanted property.